If you have a Facebook account and at least one functioning eye, you’ve probably seen upwards of 46,000 images of fathers, dads, daddies and pops over the last 48 hours. Everybody looks happy in all the pictures and the smiles rarely look coerced.

I’ve been a father coming up on nine years, and with the increased level of daditudinal fortitude I’ve had to drum up as the years go passing by, I assumed the Father’s Day festivities would get ramped up accordingly.

When the kids are 3 or 4 years old, a homemade card is perfectly acceptable. When the little scamps reach a point where they can program the DVR and access NASA launch codes with a Gmail account, then it’s time for them to wheel in the Rolex watches and gold tooth caps.

Even though I believe myself to be a bling-worthy father, I haven’t worn a watch in 20 years and gold tooth caps make Pepsi taste funny. Instead, Tax Deductions 1 & 2 came up with a very nice shirt and two pairs of shorts as a gift. Since the shorts I wear most of the time are hand-me-downs that were out of style when they were turned over to me around a decade ago, these new editions were right on time.

In addition to the great presents, The Wife prepared my favorite dinner: breakfast. There is nothing like dining on bacon, eggs, biscuits and fruit in the middle of the day — except for maybe a peanut butter and cabbage sandwich.

Some of the woe surrounding my Father’s Day was self-inflicted. After several months of misfires and house fires, we decided to delve headlong into Tax Deduction No. 2’s potty training. We knew this mission would be a difficult one, but it was also one that had to be done. Many hours have been spent sitting on the edge of the tub while TD No. 2 was perched on a little plastic training potty with the collected works of Walter Elias Disney by her side. I kept asking her if she needed to go, and she just kept saying, “It’s stuck!”

After a rocky start a few weeks back, we’d gotten TD No. 2 to a good place in all matters water closet. To be fair, we did ask her if she needed to go every six minutes for several days straight, but after a while, she started charging into the facilities with vigor — and on more than one occasion, a flawed sense of depth perception. With a rousing chorus of “GOOD JOB,” hugs galore and the promise of two shiny new M&Ms with every successful launch, we were one step closer to not having to spend a king’s ransom on diapers.

While potty training was entering the home stretch this week, TD No. 2 came down with some sort of virus. I wrongly assumed that once both of the TDs were away from school and its army of smarmy, walking Petri dishes with flashing-light sneakers, we’d be in the clear. The doctor told us it was a virus and would probably last for three days. During those three days, much of the potty progress we’d made eroded at an alarming rate. Between her sore throat and headache, TD No. 2 was in no mood to perform for M&Ms.

Page 2 of 3 - On Sunday — Father’s Day — TD No. 2 finally gave up the ghost and realized she needed to bond with the facilities. In her panic to get to where she needed to go, she got a little tangled up in her big girl draws. Hearing her distress call — which resembles a giraffe with vertigo — I walked into the bathroom to find her in the toe-touching position. She’d somehow gotten tangled up in her undergarment and was hobbling around the bathroom like a tall crab yelling, “It’s stuck, it’s stuck!”

While she was still tangled up in her skivvies, TD No. 2 kept trying in vain to sit on the little plastic potty. A couple of times she missed by a good 2 feet; a few other times she’d glance the side of it and come to rest on the cold, unforgiving bathroom tile. I saw a guy do the same little dance at the CBGB bathroom in New York once, but I was under no moral or legal obligation to help him.

Eventually we freed TD No. 2 from her flowery cotton shackles and she was able to complete the transaction with seconds to spare. After her hug/M&M tour, we noticed TD No. 1 was lying down in the living room. After a thermometer check, it was determined that whatever TD No. 2 had just about gotten over had now infected TD No. 1.

For a brief moment, a job as a weather station janitor in Antarctica sounded mighty inviting.

With the whining and the twitching and the squealing and the moaning seemingly under control for a few seconds, I decided to take my father (actually, my Daddy) his Father’s Day present. I believe spending time with your father on Father’s Day is spiritually rewarding. It also had the added benefit of being several miles away from the twitching, squealing, whining and moaning that has wallpapered my existence going on four days.

I walked into my parents’ house and — to my amazement — many of the same sounds I’d just escaped were there to greet me. Apparently, The Parents had come down with some sort of sinus/achy/fever of the bubonic variety themselves.

My father opened his present — a book on Bobby Jones written by Mark Frost — and sneezed a sneeze that could’ve put out a California forest fire. This sneeze actually showed up on the Doppelganger radar on the local news that night.

After trying unsuccessfully to un-stick the pages from each other, my father now owns a Bobby Jones door stop.

I eased back to the house and caught a segment on CBS Sunday Morning that profiled comedian Jim Gaffigan. Gaffigan and his wife have five children, and even though he is one of the top touring comics in the country, he/they have decided to reside in a small New York City apartment. All of his children — living in dirty old New York City — were free of fever and seemed a general delight to be around.

Page 3 of 3 - Gaffigan said he and his wife were having such a good time with the kids that they may have another one.

Sorry, but I’m having to cut this column short. I’m about to board a plane headed for NYC. I have a Monday morning appointment to slap Jim Gaffigan with an old fax machine.

Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or at jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase the new Third of Never album ‘Downrising’ on iTunes, Amazon or jondawson.com.